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| Bryan Berg - House of Cards |
Yes, I am revising and shaping up my chapters but I am also adding to them, writing more and more in between the lines. (And I thought I was done with all the heavy writing in my first draft.)
The margins are all to blame. They stand there innocently enough, wanting to help. I cross out a few words here, a sentence there and rewrite in the wide open spaces. The trouble starts when I notice how a change of a few words can invoke a different tone for my character. Another side of them is revealed and it makes me want to go exploring. Streams of words follow, dialogues, new scenes, even whole chapters emerge. In the moment, it's all wonderful until I look back and realize that I am now somewhere else in my novel, in uncharted territory. Wonderful then turns into disconcerting.
These new words impact not only the current scene they enter but all the choices my main character makes from beginning to end. They challenge everything that stands in the first draft and take me to task for a better house of words. "Revision" is too simple a word for all the elaborate play they make inside my head. Truthfully I can't ignore it. I know it's what's needed but dang, if you could only see the view from where I stand.
Where have your revisions taken you? Did you find your way back to your story or did you find something else, for better or for worse, in between the lines?
